


Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)

by misura



Category: The Secret Country Series - Pamela Dean
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, No Plot/Plotless, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26952553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: Ruth makes an eminently sensible and cool-headed decision.
Relationships: Ruth Carroll/Randolph (Secret Country)
Kudos: 1





	Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)

As far as first kisses went, it wasn't half bad.

Of course, Ruth reminded herself, Randolph had kissed any number of people before her, including Claudia. He should probably be considered an experienced kisser, which made him quite suitable for someone like Ruth, who had only ever kissed her family, and those kisses had been nothing like this.

Looked at it in this light, her decision to kiss Randolph had to be considered both logical and sensible.

Which was reassuring, because Ruth was reasonably certain she might have died of shame if she'd ended up kissing Randolph for no better reason than that he made her feel _mushy_. That would have been several kinds of horrible, and multiple levels of terrible on top of that.

Instead, she, Ruth, had kept her head cool and taken an opportunity to gain a useful experience.

_What a practical person I am,_ Ruth thought to herself. _I should be proud._

She realized Randolph was looking at her, half like he wanted to kiss her again and half like he was worried of how she might react if he did.

"Ruth?" He sounded the way he looked. It really was a miracle he'd been able to keep people from finding out he'd poisoned the king; Fence, at least, should have been able to see it at once.

"I'm fine." What a hopelessly silly thing to say: of course she was fine. It was hardly as if people routinely got hurt being kissed. "I - " _I was thinking about how good it is of me to keep a cool head._

"I did not mean to overstep," Randolph said, and Ruth thought to herself that Randolph was being silly about this, too, because you didn't use your feet for kissing, so you couldn't overstep or misstep or anything the like, even if you tried, which Randolph hadn't.

He'd simply sat down next to her, and Ruth had looked at him, and thought, _yes,_ and he'd seemed to read her mind and reached for her, slow and gentle, as if he wanted to make sure that she knew that she might pull away after all, in spite of what she'd thought at him.

"I was just thinking you're a very good kisser," Ruth said.

Randolph - was that a _blush_? Ruth decided that she enjoyed the idea of having been able to make a grown man blush entirely too much.

"Because of how many people you've kissed already," she added.

Randolph stopped blushing (if that was indeed what he'd been doing) and grimaced. "Not as many as that. Hardly as many as some."

"More than me," Ruth said. "Not that that would take much. And I think it's a good thing. I mean, think of how awkward this kissing thing would be if neither of us knew what we were doing. Instead, now I can take advantage of your experience."

Randolph, of all things, laughed. Ruth normally liked it when he did - especially after those long weeks when he had barely even smiled, because he was convinced that he deserved to die and only still lived because everyone needed him too much.

"I'm not trying to be funny. I'm just being practical."

"Of a certainty," Randolph said, still sounding amused. "And so, may I hope thou wouldst take more advantage still, or hast thou learned what lessons thou would already?"

"I'm of the firm conviction that nobody is ever too old to learn something new," Ruth said. She felt pleased with how grown-up that sounded. "That means you can kiss me again, if you'd like," she added, in case he hadn't understood.

"Yes," Randolph said, and did so, and Ruth decided that she'd been right: another few hundred times, and she might very well feel confident that there was nothing left for her to learn about kissing, but not for a long while yet.


End file.
